Britney Spears enjoying her song with her boyfriend: It's hard to imagine anyone beyond the creators of "Glee" finding inspiration in Britney Spears. But as Molly Bell and Daya Curley will tell you, sometimes rock-bottom moments can inspire as much as a success story - that and Bell's ability to move like Spears.
"Our original idea was a sketch comedy type show, and my original thought was to do a short on a character like Britney, who is taught how to sing and sort of doing a spoof on 'My Fair Lady,' " said Bell, a Los Altos native. She plays the pop starlet in the show.
"I also happen to be able to dance like Britney Spears. So we thought there was enough of a story there to create a whole show, since at that time she was in the shaving-her-head period," Bell said. That was back in 2007. "We decided to start there and look back at her life through therapy."
What Bell and co-writer/director Curley (who's from Mountain View) discovered is that Spears' childhood easily lent itself to song, spoof and dance with a compassionate undertone. As the story goes, Spears was a former child pageant star that struck it big on "Star Search." That led to her eventual climb and her position as her family's main source of income.
In "Becoming Britney," we see Spears reflect on her childhood through musical interludes.
"We did quite a bit of research. People are usually surprised that there's quite a story when it comes to Britney, and the pageant world she lived in for a while," Bell said. "The story is not just a spoof. It really has heart to it. ... It's an interesting story of a young girl sort of saving her family and being the breadwinner."
As the two best friends tell it, Spears was just a great jumping-off point for them to use their theater backgrounds to create their own show, which premiered at New York's Fringe Festival in 2008.
"Britney Spears is the outline, and we use that to pay homage to musical theater," Curley said. "It's very meta-theatrical. It's not a spoof of specific songs - it's a spoof of specific styles."
The creators also call it a "period piece" because it doesn't reflect Spears' current life. And while none of her songs are actually used, expect about 20 percent of Spears-influenced pop jams (lip-synced, no less) and 60 percent musical-theater show tunes backed by a sole piano player.
"It's definitely a comment on pop culture and celebrity culture and parents who push their kids into this world," Curley said. "We tried in some ways to give Britney a comeback with this piece. ... She is our musical-theater heroine - she's not our victim."